TikTok’s Algorithm of Gay Hate and Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill

When Facebook was shut down in 2021, on the eve of the presidential elections, it was by far Uganda’s most popular social media website. Everyone I knew was there: friends, coworkers, lovers, exes, people I went to school with, and people I just saw in my neighborhood. In fact, it was a mini-dating site for queer people and it allowed you to find out which of your friends knows your potential crush, and then message them for some verifiable background information. It was also a place for community, where gossip and safety information was shared in messaging groups, as well as general news and information. 

My instinct around the time of the shutdown was to simply use a VPN to bypass the Facebook shutdown. I did find friends, family, and acquaintances with technical know-how there, but it was nothing like the community I had once known. After years of this shutdown, the COVID-19 pandemic, growing up, and re-aligning priorities, I finally gave up on Facebook, as did the majority of my friends, family, and community. I check my messages and notifications on occasion to keep up with correspondence from acquaintances outside of Uganda, but Facebook is mostly a shell of its former self. I frequently wonder, “Where did all those people in my Facebook community go?” There is no single easy answer, but a good number of them (particularly from within my circle) can be found on WhatsApp and Instagram.

During the pandemic though, a new social media tool emerged from the ruins of Facebook in Uganda: TikTok. The number of Ugandan users on the video microblogging website is not available, but its influence can be seen through the sheer metrics and reactions to Ugandan content. For example, the most popular content creators in Uganda have 6 million followers. These are Kim Kardashian numbers! Kim Kardashian has 8 million followers.

Over the years, I’ve realized that many Ugandans (including myself) are merely consumers of TikTok content. We could easily spend two hours in heavy traffic just scrolling through videos on our favorite niche topics. There is something for everyone, including queer people, whether it’s food, music, endless fights between content creators, or just educational and funny content. In fact, I have never seen queer Ugandans as visible, free, and open as on TikTok in my life as a Ugandan. Many of my non-queer friends admit to knowing at least one LGBTIQ+ person through TikTok content.

TikTok’s algorithm, like many other social media sites before it (Hi Facebook), amplifies hate and divisiveness to drive conversation, likes and views. It’s no surprise that videos of LGBTIQ+ content frequently go viral, even if they’re as innocuous as someone walking down the street or dancing in a bar. LGBTIQ+ people and allies have been a particular target of “content-farmers”; these are essentially TikTok users/content creators who pick up on divisive issues in politics and culture to boost sales of their products or services. To spread fake news, misinformation, and hate speech, these content farmers frequently imitate the social media pages of legitimate media outlets such as NTV Uganda or NBS Uganda. In fact, when there is a high demand for content, they will search the depths of the internet for anti-gay content from the early 2000s and re-purpose it for the current market.

There is a likelihood that anti-gay content on TikTok contributed significantly to the panic that led up to the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in March 2023 which was recently signed into law. (Some of the panic included this unverified story of sexual abuse from Budo, which led to a government investigation that is yet to yield results.) Indeed, many of the conversations and unverified “cases of homosexuality” that many Ugandan lawmakers openly discussed in the run-up to the bill were spread and amplified by these TikTok content farmers. 

The algorithm ensured that Ugandans (both pro- and anti-gay) had an unrestricted supply of this content. New pages were created to simply distribute and share this content; new content creators looking to make a buck profited from this misinformation; religious leaders saw this as an entry point into the hearts and minds of young people on social media; and old content creators shifted their focus from the mundane to bashing homosexuals. I personally could not escape the renewed focus on this topic, with every third video in my feed being about homosexuality. These videos garner hundreds of thousands of views as engagement on them is higher. A simple search of the term “kisiyaga” (the luganda term referring to homosexuality) or “LGBT” on TikTok will produce videos with thousands if not millions of views.

While LGBTIQ+ people and allies were bombarded with all of this, TikTok was largely absent from the conversation. TikTok’s hate speech detectors do not appear to as effectively remove videos that contain hate speech in Luganda (the most spoken language in the country’s capital). Videos calling for the murder of homosexuals in Luganda are frequently left up for days or weeks unless they are reported multiple times, at which point TikTok will remove them and ban the user. 

John Grace, a regular TikTok user pointed out that in this video which calls for the murder and lynching of LGBTQ Ugandans, and this video which is one among many screen recordings of a live video of a person describing in gruesome detail how LGBTQ persons should be murdered. These videos like others calling for the death of LGBTQ persons in Luganda are still up despite being reported countless times. There’s even videos targeting particular queer people for doxxing and harassment still up on TikTok like this one saying that the first “target” of the bill should be the two queer tiktok creators. 

The anti-gay content farmers have not let up since the bill’s passage. They’ve found a new target. Along with rival pastors, they are now accusing a prominent Kampala pastor of homosexuality. Some accounts purposely promoting this story on TikTok also, another account dedicated to exclusively defend the pastor and push counter accusations. I can’t tell you how many times in the last few weeks I’ve come across accusations and counter-accusations, story shifts, and recycled 2000s videos about this pastor on TikTok. For one thing, this amounts to targeted harassment; however, will TikTok take any action? I seriously doubt it.

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For both queer and non-queer people in Uganda, the proliferation of this rhetoric and TikTok’s subsequent inaction could have disastrous effects, in the same way that the aforementioned Facebook’s inaction directly aided in a genocide. 

The similarities and difficulties that the major social media platforms face in these situations are so striking that it almost seems implausible. For example, Facebook had trouble moderating content that was in local languages. Furthermore, they lacked staff members who were responsible for monitoring hate speech and content in the region. So, to TikTok, have you learnt anything about moderation from Facebook?

Edited and Reviewed by Uzoma Ihejirika and Caleb Okereke.